


Reverberations

by Dolorosa



Category: Romanitas - Sophia McDougall
Genre: Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 01:52:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2795432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dolorosa/pseuds/Dolorosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Several years after the events of <em>Savage City</em>, Una, Makaria and Noriko meet. All three feel the effects of the war and slave rebellion in different ways. This work is a treat for ser_dontos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reverberations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ser_dontos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ser_dontos/gifts).



I. Una

It had surprised Una how quickly Rome reclaimed the space around the statue of Marcus. She avoided the area, for the most part, although she found herself drifting back whenever she had an important decision to make, walking careful, unobtrusive circles around the statue’s base until she had made up her mind. She told herself the first time it was because the area was likely to be quiet, but when she discovered children racing up and down, chasing a dog, mothers carrying placid babies, workers sitting cross-legged and eating their lunch, and even a food stall and a market, she didn’t walk away.

And so she returned to the statue in Trajan’s Forum when Sulien pressed her to make contact with their mother (her answer to that remained an adamant no), when Varius grew tired of working with Delir and made noises about reopening the slave clinic (which she ultimately advised him to do), and when her boss at the Palatine Library suggested that she spend some time at one of the academies now open to women (an opportunity she declined regretfully).

So it was only natural that Una, Maralah’s words ringing angrily in her ears, found herself back under the statue, her mind worrying away at the problem at hand. Two young women rushed past her, and Una wearily brushed their thoughts — frustration with their parents’ strictness, excitement about a trip to the theatre — away from her mind. There were other people in the square, and the buzz of their worries, sadness, irritation and glee hovered just at the edge of her awareness, dulling the sharpness of her own thoughts.

Una’s guilt stabbed at her. The trouble was, Maralah was right, and right to have argued with her that morning. Apart from maintaining cautious lines of communication across the Empire — and stretching into Sina and the Nionian parts of the world — Una hadn’t fulfilled any of her angry promises to end slavery. Her contacts still got people out when they could, but it was a drop in the ocean. She had realised, bitterly, that the war that they had all fought so desperately to end had actually made it easier for slaves to get away from terrible situations, as the conflict had displaced millions, and nobody had cared enough to chase after individual slaves wandering the world.

Una wearily brushed her hair away from her face. She was going to have to talk to Makaria.

II. Makaria

Makaria was tired. She had been up late arguing with the Nionians, and with representatives from Terranova and Tokogane, trying to hammer out an agreement about free movement between the two regions. The Nionians were all for it, but the others equivocated and insinuated, concerned about imagined skirmishes and diminished authority over their own borders. It was exhausting. Desperate for a moment for herself, she had slipped away from the palace in the early hours of the morning, leaving Hypatia sleeping in the summer sun. In a nod to security, she had taken a single guard, as she had known she would never have been able to get away unnoticed. He had followed a few paces behind her as she strode purposefully through the streets of Rome, ducking out of the way of early-morning delivery vehicles, avoiding the more populated areas.

‘I should have known I’d find you here,’ Makaria said to the slender figure crouched beside Marcus’ statue.

‘I felt you come into the forum,’ Una said. ‘They will open the border, you know. They’re just trying to squeeze more money out of you and the Nionians. The war bled them dry.’

Makaria smiled thinly.

‘I always forget you can do that,’ she said, settling down next to Una, the guard hovering a respectful distance away with an expression of curiosity on his face.

‘Do you come here often?’ asked Una.

‘I came here once, a couple of months after the war. Someone had put _flowers_ at the base of the statue.’ She hadn’t quite known what she felt about that.

Una seemed to have picked up a thought Makaria hadn’t even been aware of thinking.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘the flowers weren’t me! I just come here from time to time. It’s always full of loud, boisterous people, but it’s peaceful, somehow. I can think here without everyone getting in the way.’

The two women sat in silence for a few moments. Makaria always forgot how difficult she found it to talk to Una. Her usual bluntness didn’t work, as Una had already read her thoughts before she gave them voice. She still couldn’t sort out her tangle of feelings about the slave rebellion, and had made surreptitious donations to Varius and Sulien's slave clinic out of a mixture of guilt and gratitude. Una, she knew, would never take anything from her.

‘I heard they tried to send you to the academy at Athens,’ said Makaria. ‘Why didn’t you go?’

‘Too much to do here in Rome,’ Una said shortly. ‘People need me.’

Makaria thought wearily of the people who needed her, hungry mouths as far away Terranova, self-important senators, soldiers demanding pensions. She thought of the ever-present need for ceremony and display, and her fear that she secretly enjoyed it.

‘I know you’re sending people into Nionia,’ she said to Una. ‘I know your Persian friends are helping ferry slaves out of the Empire, and that Sulien’s clinic is a front. I’m content to let this go on happening, as long as you keep doing what you’re doing as quietly and on as small a scale as you’re going about it now.’

‘So no grand gestures, then?’ said Una, and she laughed bitterly. ‘Sulien would have me head up a second base of operations in Alexandria, and Maralah would have me lead troops into the Golden Palace or force all slaves in the Empire to go on strike, and Noriko would — well, it’s hard to say what Noriko would have me do.’

Una stood up abruptly and started scanning the area.

‘Noriko’s here,’ she said.

III. Noriko

Noriko had headed to the only place she knew in Rome that would not evoke difficult, fearful memories. Una had told her about the statue in Trajan’s Forum in a terse longdictor conversation during which each woman had stepped carefully around the other one's feelings and said very little of substance. Noriko felt a duty towards Una, and felt that she should try to show an interest in the other woman’s life, but it was hard to find conversational topics that weren’t fraught with painful feelings.

This was the first time Noriko had been back to Rome in more than two years. She had made a brief, ceremonial trip a few months after the peace negotiations had concluded, mainly as a piece of propaganda to signal that hostilities had ended and that normal diplomatic relations had resumed, speaking careful Latin for a longvision broadcast that would be shown in all corners of the Roman and Nionian Empires. She was thinking of that broadcast as she made her way towards the statue of Marcus, remembering the ridiculous, ostentatiously traditional clothes she had been forced to wear, and the sun blazing down on her and Makaria as they spoke the words that had been written for them.

Spotting Una pacing the area in front of the statue, she hurried forward to embrace her, noting Una’s usual rigidity and unease at being touched, although the other woman was careful to hug her back.

‘You’re here, Lady Novia — Makaria — is here. Who else should I expect to show up? Sulien’s old cohort from the war?’ said Una.

Noriko smoothed the creases from her Sinoan-style trousers and sighed.

‘I suppose I should tell you now. You are going to have to find new contacts in Nionia. I won’t be able to help get your escapees in any more, as I’m back in Rome for good.’

Noriko was gratified to see Makaria’s look of surprise: it was hard to get anything past the careful watchfulness of the Novian ruler. Una, on the other hand, was nodding as if something she’d long suspected had been confirmed.

‘It’s impossible to go back, isn’t it? You went because you thought it your duty, because there were things to be done in Nionia that only you could do, but by the time you returned, the space you had occupied there had closed up behind you,’ she said.

‘The world had changed too much,’ Noriko replied, ‘and they were all saying that I had become too different. Not Nionian, not Roman, but something strange and in between.’

‘I suppose you’ve come to the right place,’ said Makaria. ‘If you don’t feel at home anywhere else, at least here you can disappear. There are so many people to hide behind.’

‘Rome has a way of swallowing you up,’ Una said in agreement.

Neither of them said that after the events of the war and the slave rebellion, the three of them were the most recognisable women in the world, and that there was no way any of them would ever be able to hide again, even in Rome. It was only the earliness of the hour that prevented their little gathering from being a full-blown spectacle. Makaria signalled for her guard.

‘Time for me to get going,’ she said.

‘Noriko will stay with me for the time being,’ said Una, reading the thought before Makaria had a chance to give it voice. ‘Since this is not a diplomatic visit, I see no reason why the Novians need to get involved.’

Both Makaria and Noriko shot her looks of profound gratitude.

‘Just so we’re clear,’ said Makaria, ‘I heard nothing about any networks sending slaves into Nionia.’

She walked away briskly, her guard following at her heels. Una paused for a moment, her hand resting on the stone at the base of Marcus’ statue. As the sun rose, the cold stone grew warmer. Noriko and Una turned to leave, walking from the forum as the city woke around them.


End file.
